As these words are being written, the U. S. space-probe Pioneer II is even now on its
way to a rendezvous with Saturn which, barring any unforeseeable accidents,
is due to occur in September of 1979, two years hence. The data that will
be collected and relayed to Earth by this probe will therefore be crucial to
the astronomical con­tent of this article. But already there are
indications that we, as well as Velikovsky, are on the right track. Writing
in the 1976 Yearbookof Science and the Future, Henry T. Simmons states:

"Like those of Jupiter, the cloud tops of Saturn occur in alternating light
and dark bands, and it also appears thatthe planet emits more
heat than it receives from the Sun. Scientists recently found that
Saturn generates bursts in the one-megahertz frequency range. This suggests
that it has an internal magnetic field as well as radiation belts of trapped
electrons like Jupiter (emphasis added)."(1)

Data from
Pioneers 10 and 11 has now disclosed that Jupiter is a fast rotating mass of
liquid and "solid" hydrogen. Its weather is con­vective, driven by what
scientists are now beginning to call its “primordial internal heat.”(2)
Astronomers are also beginning to talk about Jupiter's "starlike properties"
and its similarities to a “mini-solar system" with its accompanying retinue
of satellites.(3) Dr. D. McNally, of the University of London Observatory,
has also suggested the idea that Jupiter may be more like a star than a
planet (4) and did not Velikovsky himself call Jupiter and Saturn dark
stars, (5) even predicting that the former's core would be found to have a
very high temperature?(6)

John A.
Simpson, professor of physics at the University of Chi­cago, now describes
Jupiter as "nature's best gift of what a poor man's star [or sun] is
like."(7) Like Saturn, Jupiter radiates "more than twice as much heat as it
receives from the Sun."(8) According to McNally, it is not just Jupiter but
all of the Jovian planets that can be classified as "failed stars."(9) "If
they [the Jovian planets] can be classified in this way," says Eric Crew,
"this means that any deductions about Jupiter are likely to apply to the
other gaseous type planets, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune."(10)

In a recent
issue of Science Digest. Arielle Emmet echoed the same views:

"Recent
observations of the giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, lend credence to
earlier speculation that both were actually proto-stars ...

"Composition of the two giants, astronomers found, is also more starlike
than planetlike, consisting mainly of hydrogen and helium. Both planets
have satellite systems which are like miniature solar systems . . ."(11)

"But Jupiter is
definitely not a star," states Simmons and adds that, although the
planet's core may reach as much as 30,000°C,
its temperature is "hundreds of times too low to ignite the
thermonu­clear reactions that heat the stars."(12) These giant
planets, Emmet continues to echo him, "could not heat up enough to
begin deuteri­um burning "(13)

Or
is it that these two "planets" did once so burn as relatively
miniature suns and that, through evolutionary or catastrophic
pro­cesses, their glorious radiation became permanently dimmed? --
For how else can we account for the very strange fact that, out of
the many denizens of the sky, the ancients picked on precisely these
two "planets" and obstinately insisted in alluding to them both
as suns?

Of
Jupiter, whom the Israelites called the Sun of Righteous­ness, (14)
we shall not write here. For the present, we wish to restrict our
attention to Saturn which Velikovsky also insisted once to have been
a sun.(15)

2.The Sun of Night.

Today, no mythologist will contest the fact that Kronos was the
Greek name of the planet Saturn. Yet Macrobius, in the fourth
Christian century, identified Kronos as the Sun.(16) Granted that by
that time, as Velikovsky pointed out, there began "a tendency to see
in many gods of Egyptian and Greek antiquity the personification of
the sun"(17) -- can we honestly say that Macrobius was that much in
error? Earlier, Diodorus Siculus, in discussing the names that the
Chaldeans gave to the planets, also stated that "the one called
Cronos by the Greeks ... they [the Chaldeans] call the star of
Helius."(18) Helius (or Helios), as almost everybody knows, is the
name by which the Greeks called the Sun. Strictly speaking, this
was not exactly an error on the part of Diodorus for, to the
Chaldeans and Assyro Babylonians, as we shall see, Shamash was a
name which they bestowed on both the Sun and the planet Saturn.

This confusion of Saturn with the Sun did not originate due to the
ignorance of the ancient astronomers. It was due to those later
ones who were born too late to see that Saturn was once indeed a
sun. As such was this "planet" viewed by the very ancients, as such
was it remembered by their descendants, and as such must we think of
it if we wish to understand the message that our ancient forebears
attempted to relay to us.

Diodorus Siculus was not the only writer of antiquity who stated
that the Babylonians called Saturn the "sun star."(19) Hyginus also
expressed his opinion that Saturn was called "the star of the
sun.(20) Among modern Assyriologists, it seems as if Thompson was
one of the first to notice that the Babylonians designated the
planet Saturn as Shamash.(21) Yet Shamash, as a cursory glance
through any work on Assyro-Babylonian mythology will show, was, very
much like the Egyptian Ra, the usual Babylonian name for the Sun.
In fact, variants of the word "shamash" still mean "sun" in many
modem Semitic languages.(22) Among the Aramaeans the word is
rendered semes (shemesh) or simsa (shimsha).(23) In
pre-­Islamic times, the Arabian word was Samsu (or Shamshu).(24)
Even in Maltese, the native tongue of the present writer, the Sun is
called "xemx" - the "x" being phonetically equivalent to "sh"
(i.e., shemsh).

This truth, that the Babylonians called Saturn by the name of the
Sun, is not hidden behind a veil of mystery; it is, on the contrary,
laid bare for the inspection of any scholar. The Babylonians said
it themselves in as many words:

This is the same as saying that the "planet" Saturn was a sun --
there is no other way in which these words could be interpreted.

Undeniable evidence also points to the conception of a night-sun
existing in ancient Babylonian astrological thought in conjunction
with a day-sun. The latter was viewed as the greater while the
former was viewed as the lesser of the "two chief lights of the
heaven, one to serve during the day and the other at night.”(26)
This is indicated by the fact that the Sun was called "Samse [or
Shamshe] u-mi," which means "Shamash of the day.”(27) Saturn must
then have been the sun of night, a contention that was also upheld
by no less an authority than Morris Jastrow Jr. who expressed the idea in these words:

"Strange as it may seem to us, the planet Saturn appears to have
been regarded as 'the sun of night' corresponding to Samas as 'the
sun of the daytime' and the cause of such light as the night furnishes."(28)

Jastrow's explanation of this phenomenon, however, is a very lame
one:

"It
was argued, that since there was a sun furnishing the light of day,
so there must be some corresponding power which causes the
illuminations of the heavens at night. Saturn was chosen -- in
preference even to the moon ­because of the slowness of its
movement, which made it visible continuously for a long period . . . ,(29)

Jastrow continues by
telling us that the light of the Moon, as well as of the planets and
the stars, was, by the Babylonians, ascribed to Saturn. (30) But
would the Babylonians, who could calculate the complex motions of
the heavenly bodies with mathematical accura­cy, have been so naive
as to invent a concept in which even the most ignorant of their
peasantry could hardly have believed? Should we not rather believe
the words of Diodorus when he states that the reason the Chaldeans
called Saturn by the name of the Sun was because it was the most
"Prominent" of the five planets or the stars?(")

In fact, not only do
we agree with Diodorus that Saturn at one time was the most
prominent of the planets, we also believe that, even though it shone
less brightly than the Sun -- although more so than the Moon of
later times(32) -- Saturn appeared larger in the night sky than the
Sun did during the day. A colleague of Jastrow, Professor J. A.
Montgomery, has even raised "the interesting question whether in
Genesis 1: 16 the two 'lights' may not at one time have referred
to the Sun and Saturn ?”(33 ) This is an interesting sup­position
for, in the Biblical passage referred to, which supposedly describes
the creation of Sun and Moon, neither Sun nor Moon is mentioned.
The passage merely reads:

"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule
the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the
stars also (emphasis added)."(34)

Ninip (Ninib), or
Nirig, was another Babylonian name for the “planet" Saturn.(35)
Under this name, the "planet" was deified as "the ghost of the elder
god" and "the black Saturn, the ghost of thedead sun,
the demoniac elder god" (emphasis added).(36)

We
should leave it to a later article to see what exactly was meant by
these appellations but, after what we have already divulged, it
should not take much to deduce the truth. Saturn was the "elder
god" because he was the first god that man ever bowed his head to.
In fact, Saturn was the most ancient of the ancient deities.

Today, Saturn is definitely not the radiant sun it used to be. In
time, it removed itself from the vicinity of the Earth, or vice
versa. Time has also dimmed its lustre and, although there is much
more to Saturn's tale, the above simple statements explain it all.
Because of that, Saturn was later called the "ghost of the elder
god" -- "the ghost of the dead sun." Obviously, our present Sun is
not dead.

3.The Nocturnal Sun of Egypt.

As
every mythologist knows, Ra, the Egyptian god generally believed to
personify the Sun, was burdened by many another name. One of these
was Temu (or Atum), a divine alias which bore a speci­fic and, from
an orthodox point of view, strange characteristic. ­Temu was a
sun of night.(37)

Students of Egyptian mythology, E. A. Wallis Budge among them, have
long grappled with the exact meaning that lies hidden beneath this
strange characteristic of Temu-Ra (or Ra-Temu). The best that Budge
himself could offer was that Temu was the Sun after it had
Set.(38) By this he meant to imply that the Egyptians worshipped
the Sun even when it was absent from the sky. Sun worship at night,
however, makes for an incongruous institution. This fallacious
inter­pretation should never have been derived, and it would not
have, had the Egyptologists thought of comparing their texts more
diligently with those in the hands of the Assyriologists. Temu-Ra
was the same as Shamash-Saturn. It seems, therefore, that Professor
William Mullen was right when he identified Atum, the same as Temu,
as the planet Saturn.(39)

Mullen's equation of Atum with Osiris,(40) and Velikovsky's
iden­tification of Osiris as the planet Saturn,(41) also seems to be
correct as, in Egypt, this sun of night was also anthropomorphosed
as the god Osiris. M. Mariette-Bey tells us that:

"Originally, Osiris is the nocturnal sun; he is the primordial night
of chaos; he is consequently anterior to Ra, the Sun of Day."(42)

But, as
we have seen, Ra, as Temu, was also the sun of night, so that Osiris
could not have been anterior to him.

Mariette-Bey's contention is also shared by E. A. Wallis Budge who
informs us:

"The Egyptian texts suggest that in late times the Sun-god of night
may have been regarded as a form of Osiris.”(41)

We do not, however,
agree with Budge that Osiris' connection with the night sun evolved
in "late times" for we definitely come across such allusions as
early as the Vth Dynasty in the Pyramid Texts of Unas and others.

In
his other name of Neb-er-tcher -- and Osiris was known under many
names(44) -- the god was known as the "god of the uni­verse.”(45)
This is the same title bestowed on the Vedic and Hindu Creator,
Brahma, whom Velikovsky has also identified as Saturn.(46) Brahma,
too, was honored as the "Lord of the Universe.”(47) In Babylonian
mythology, Saturn was also called En-Me Sar-ra (or Shar-ra), which
means "Lord [or king] of the law of the universe.”(48) This title
strengthens the identity of these deities as the planet Saturn. It
is also evidence that Saturn was, above the Sun, the Moon, and the
other planets, honored as the sole ruler of Creation. We may
conclude that this was an apt title for the "planet" Saturn which
ancient man distinctly remembered as a glorious sun which shone at night.

NOTE: The
author wishes to acknowledge the fact that David Talbott, past
publisher of Pensee, who also has, for the past five years,
been working on the same subject, had previously circulated a paper
among trusted colleagues and that this paper contained some of the
tenets presented in the present article.

NOTES

1. Henry T. Simmons, "Visit to a Large Planet: The Pioneer
Missions to Jupiter," in the 1976 Yearbook of Science and the
Future,Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., University of Chicago, p. 43.

6. "A Record of Success," in the May 1972 issue of
Pensee,p. 23; see also Immanuel Velikovsky, "The Birth of Venus from
Jupiter," in KRONOS,Vol. 11, No. 1, (August, 1976), p. 6;
Idem., "A Rejoinder to Motz," in the April 1967 issue of the
Yale Scientific Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 7, p. 15.

14. Mentioned in the Book of Malachi,4:2; also
referred to in The Gospel according to St. Matthew, 13:43. (NOTE: In Hebrew both the word "righteousness" and the name
of the "planet" Jupiter are derived from the same root - "zedek.")

15. Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision,(see note
# 5), p. 3 73; Idem., verbally, in
Velikovsky: The Bonds of the Past,a CBC documentary by
Henry Zemel; Idem., "The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating," in
the Spring-Summer, 1973, issue of Pensee, p. 13. (NOTE: In
the last two mentioned sources, Velikovsky describes Saturn as
having flared up as a short-lived stellar nova which automatically
implies the "planet" to have been a stellar object.)

25. Morris Jastrow Jr., "Sun and Saturn," (see note * 2 1), p.
163. (NOTE: On the name "(Mul) Lu-Bat Sag-us" for Saturn, see Morris
Jastrow Jr., "Sign and Name for Planet in Babylonian," in the
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,Vol 47, p.
155 ff.)

32. It is here assumed that, although the Moon, like Venus,
was a late arrival in man's skies, our lunar satellite had already
been captured during the time when Saturn shone as a sun of night.
Actually, although in this the present author may differ from
Velikovsky, as well as from other writers working on the same
subject, the shining of Saturn as a sun of night was anterior to the
Noachian Deluge which was caused by the flare-up of the Saturnian
sun. Meanwhile, ancient traditions, as Velikovsky has already
indicated, seem to imply that the Moon was deluged together with the
Earth - so that the Moon must have already been close to the Earth
during that occurrence. Also, ancient traditions from various parts
of the world seem to indicate that the Moon once shone with a
brighter light than it does at present. On this subject, the author
will be writing at a future date.

38. Idem., The
Egyptian Book of the Dead,Dover, New
York, 1895-1967, p. 246, note 2, where Temu, here called Tmu, is
described as "the night sun, at the twelfth hour of the night."
Elsewhere in the same work, Temu is called Turn and/or Atemu (see p.
ex) which is the same as Atum, a form of the god more popularly used
in modern works of Egyptian mythology.

39. William Mullen, "A Reading of the
Pyramid Texts,"
in the Winter, 1973, issue of Pensee, pp. 14 ff.